At its core, marketing is simple. We find out where people are paying attention, show up there, tell a story, and earn their interest.

That’s why it was so interesting to see this recent report from CreatorIQ, which showed that industry leaders are allocating 3X more of their marketing budget to creators, compared to their competition.

Let’s break down what that means

Advertising is just a means to buy our way into the places where people are paying attention. Of course, it’s not the only way to get there, but it is the most direct.

The entire advertising game comes down to who can get access to the most attention in the best places for the lowest cost, and then deliver the most compelling message.

Industry leaders, as defined in this report, are the brands that are getting the highest reported ROI on their budgets, so it’s worth taking notice when there’s such a significant difference between where they’re buying attention versus the rest of the market.

The report indicates that major media platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok no longer have exclusive access to the best audience attention. Instead, the creators who have earned the attention of their own audiences are now the ones with the most to offer.

So the question is: What specifically are those brands and creators doing together?

CreatorIQ answered that by asking the market leaders what their most effective creator marketing tactics have been, and they were pretty simple:

  1. Sponsored content
  2. UGC
  3. Affiliate marketing

Compare that with the tactics they reported as least effective:

  1. Whitelisting (running brand ads on a creator’s account)
  2. Print/broadcast advertising
  3. Gifting/seeding

What’s holding the rest of us back?

The primary concern for marketers and agencies, when working with creators, was the difficulty in measuring the results of these collaborations. To me, that feels like a failure to understand what it is we’re doing when we buy advertising.

Step 1 in any good campaign is to have a clear idea of what we’re trying to achieve. Sometimes that’s purchases or bookings. Other times it’s reach and awareness. In any case, when we’re targeting a single outcome, measuring success is as simple as tracking that number.

Sure, we may not have the polished dashboards that Meta or Google provide, but by focusing on the most critical outcomes we’re trying to achieve, we have all the information we need to understand the impact of our work.

So what?

If you’re spending any money on attention, this report may be your sign to have a look at where you’re allocating your budget.

Of course, every brand is different, and each medium has its time and place, but the CreatorIQ data suggests that the most effective marketers are massively shifting their budgets toward creator-driven content. Given this trend, it’s worth considering how a similar shift could benefit your own marketing strategy.